


junk food run

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Venom Symbiote (Marvel), smol venom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26555164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: Venom's still growing back to their former size, and they need all the junk food Eddie is willing to buy.
Relationships: Eddie Brock & Venom Symbiote
Comments: 12
Kudos: 107





	junk food run

**Author's Note:**

> The only thing getting me through the last two weeks is the amount of Venom fic I've been reading, and I'm supposed to be deciding on Yuletide nominations but my brain wouldn't let me concentrate on that until I wrote some smol Venom fic. Sigh.

**We need chocolate, Eddie.** Venom says, and Eddie feels the still-small blob of the symbiote shift in him until a little head manifests out from his shoulder. It rests against Eddie's neck. **Chocolate.**

"Okay, V, I have one more paragraph to finish. Then we'll go down to Mrs. Chen's and you can pick out all the candy bars you want, okay?" Eddie lifts one hand off the keyboard to stroke Venom's gooey slickness for a quick second, his other hand still typing, a single key-press at a time. 

**Yes candy bars.** The small head presses harder against his neck, then licks. 

"Stop with the licking."

**You are salty.**

"Yeah, thanks, man," Eddie mutters. He rifles through his notebook for a second, looking for the quote he wants, and feels Venom's query. "I need that thing the last guy we interviewed said, about the missing drugs and the boats."

 **It is on the paper three before this one**. 

Eddie flips back. There it is. "Thanks, babe." He nuzzles his cheek against the clearly-pleased symbiote, who is smiling with a small mouth that's still full of sharp teeth. Venom had been even smaller, so weak they could barely speak to Eddie at all, when they'd first made their presence known again after the fall into the bay. They were recovering, but slowly. Eddie takes a handful of vitamins twice a day now, supplements he'd figured out by researching the things Venom liked to eat, and Venom says it helps. Eddie also eats several candy bars a day, and more versions of fried potatoes than he'd ever eaten before. 

He finishes up and emails the rough draft over to the fact-checker. **Eddie can we get the noodles, too?** Venom asks. They wind some tendrils around Eddie's neck like a thin slick scarf and poke at his cheek.

There's a noodle bar that's opened up a few doors down from Mrs. Chen's. Venom likes to stick their whole face in the container, then slurp annoyingly in Eddie's ear. "If you let me check my email, we can get more than one kind of noodles."

**Yes.**

Eddie reads the email from his editor with a few new ideas she wants him to scope out and scribbles them down in his notebook. Then he rubs Venom's head again and closes the laptop. "All right, time for dinner."

**You're the best Eddie.**

"I'm the only Eddie you've got."

With a pleased ripple, Venom reabsorbs back under his skin and Eddie grabs his jacket from the hook next the door. He's hung it up the last half-dozen times he's worn it, which is a new record. Somehow having to take care of the recovering symbiote has also turned in to keeping his apartment neat, and not just tossing his shit all over the place. Plus he feels like he owes it to the crime scene cleanup people who got the blood out of everything not to live in squalor. 

**Our apartment does look nice now,** Venom agrees. **It is cozy.**

"How do you even know what cozy means?"

 **I understand cozy,** Venom shouts at him, and Eddie feels their dim agitation as he goes down the stairs. **I watched a video about hygge on the youtube the other day.**

"I know it keeps you entertained but I'm starting to regret letting you on the internet, babe," he mutters, pulling up the hood of his jacket as he goes out the front door of the building into the cool evening air. It's not really cold enough out to need to cover his head, but the fabric keeps Venom hidden. "But cozy is better than your whole previous 'pile of heads, pile of bodies' decorating idea."

**Human rules demand we not use bodies for decoration.**

"See, you're learning," Eddie whispers into his shoulder, and feels Venom's amusement. 

He feels soft tendrils draped over his shoulder under his t-shirt, occasionally tapping nonsense patterns, as he goes down the block and into the store. "Hey, Mrs. Chen," he calls out.

"Hi, Eddie. You look like you're in a good mood today."

"That I am, Mrs. C., that I am." He stops in front of the candy section and feels Venom poke a tiny head out of the collar of his shirt. "Snickers, V? Three Musketeers?"

**Which has the most chocolate, Eddie!**

Eddie looks critically at the array of open display boxes. "The most chocolate, hmmm..." He picks up a couple of the plain Godiva bars, the fanciest thing Mrs. Chen stocks. "These are all chocolate, but they cost more than the junk from Nestle, so we can't buy all of them tonight if we're getting other stuff. How about this Oreo bar thing?"

**What is Oreo?**

Eddie thinks about frosting-filled cookies, and feels Venom squirm happily. Their head rubs against the side of his neck. He reaches up with the hand not holding the candy and lets Venom weave around his fingers for a second. **Buy cookies too, Eddie.**

"I thought maybe ice cream?"

Venom thrills; they love ice cream, a fact Eddie had discovered twenty minutes after the symbiote woke up from their deep sleep - **HIBERNATION, EDDIE** \- after the Drake incident, and demanded to eat everything Eddie had in the apartment. Which was leftover beef stir-fry (cold), a can of chicken noodle soup (cold), and the pint of rocky road he had stashed in the freezer. **This is so good, Eddie,** they'd said, as a relief-filled Eddie alternated between putting spoonfuls in his own mouth and letting Venom's worryingly small manifestation lick some off the spoon. **We love ice cream.**

"Hell yeah, we love ice cream," Eddie replied, nearly overwhelmed at how happy he suddenly felt, and offered Venom a chunk of chocolate.

He picks up a couple Snickers and Milky Ways, then goes back to the freezers. Their choices are cookie dough or strawberry, so he grabs the pint of cookie dough. Mrs. Chen eyes his pile of junk food. "Having a party?"

"A party of one - me, myself, and I," Eddie replies. "Don't worry, Mrs. C., I'm getting some takeout that's got vegetables in it."

Mrs. Chen doesn't look convinced as she gives him his change and his bag of desserts. "See you tomorrow, Eddie."

"You know it." He sketches a salute in her direction and backs out of the jingling door. Hunger is rumbling loudly in his belly now. Thankfully, the line at the noodle bar is short, and even though Venom likes to read the menu, Eddie knows what they're ordering. V gets the bowl with pork belly and the thinly-sliced beef that cooks right in the broth, and Eddie gets chicken and mushrooms with extra green onions. 

**Mushrooms are gross,** Venom rumbles as Eddie waits at the pickup counter. 

"You got your own, so I get to eat the one I like," Eddie reminds him. 

**SLIMY!**

"You're slimy," Eddie whispers. Venom squeezes tendrils around the back of his neck. 

"Carryout order for Eddie!" the teenager behind the counter yells, pushing a bag across. Eddie picks it up and heads out again. Venom's pleased by all the food they've gotten, and nuzzles happily against Eddie's neck some more. 

Eddie sidesteps a milkshake someone's dropped on the sidewalk. "Sorry I don't have a free hand to pet you with, babe."

Venom bristles. **Not a pet!**

"You still like it." 

A pause. **I will allow it... from you.**

Back home, Eddie gets the ice cream into the freezer before he unpacks their dinner. Venom's small manifestation winds around his shoulders as he puts the bowls on a plastic tray, then settles carefully on the sofa with the tray in his lap. His own bowl he holds up to eat out of, and Venom re-manifests out of his ribs to eat their pork and beef noodles. Sloppily. But their shared hunger starts to lessen, and Eddie strokes the top of V's head in between bites of his noodles. 

**You like to touch. Is that a human thing?**

Eddie pauses with his fingertips pressed into Venom's ooze-y form. He feels his cheeks heat up. He withdraws his hand. "I guess. You're just - here, and I don't even think about it."

Venom slurps another mouthful of curly noodles, then winds up to look Eddie in the face with their pearlescent eyes. Their odd, rippling tendrils reach out to stroke over Eddie's warm cheek as they stare at him. **Your face is prickly!**

Eddie blinks. "Yeah, I didn't shave today."

 **Eat your noodles so we can have the ice cream, Eddie. I must eat more and grow!** Venom slides back down to their bowl and Eddie hears them chomp a slice of beef.


End file.
